Quantitative measurement of the complex dielectric permittivity of a material versus frequency (e.g., dielectric spectroscopy, also known as DS) can be a powerful monitoring technique with a broad range of applications. For example, DS can be utilized for chemical analysis of oil in the petroleum industry, analysis of substances for security or defense purposes, soil moisture monitoring in agriculture, fermentation monitoring during the production of alcoholic beverages, food quality/safety monitoring and drug development in the pharmaceutical industry. DS can also be used as an analytical tool in the biomedical field as a label-free, non-destructive and real-time method to study the interaction of RF/microwave fields with biological/biochemical samples with minimal sample preparation. Key molecular characteristics of biomaterials such as human blood, spinal fluid, breast tissue and skin have been studied using DS for applications in disease detection and clinical diagnosis. Typical DS systems tend to be large and expensive, making them cost-prohibitive in certain circumstances.